Yearlong spacemen embrace fresh, frigid air back on Earth

NASA has been studying Kelly and his identical twin, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, throughout the 340-day mission, to determine the effects of a long-term stay in orbit on a person’s immune system, mental health and body systems.

Kelly and his Russian roommate for the past year, Mikhail Kornienko, landed in barren, frozen Kazakhstan on Wednesday.

American astronaut Scott Kelly is scheduled to arrive in Houston Wednesday night after spending 340 days in space.

After a year in space Astronaut Scott Kelly is back on Earth.

Kelly will fly to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where, after a brief rest, he’ll be examined by a bevy of scientists itching to examine him and gather samples.

Volkov, who has been in space for 5-1/2 months, was the first to emerge from the capsule, to be greeted by his father Alexander Volkov, also a cosmonaut. I guess you could use that term, but I think we all are, you know, all the crew members over the last 15 years and even those who came before that. “I’ve flown in space four times now, so it’s going to be hard in that respect, but I certainly look forward to going back to Earth“.

This is where Kelly’s twin brother Mark comes into play. “The air. I don’t mean to say it’s not fresh on the station, but it’s – there’s nothing like new cold air coming into the capsule”, said Kelly during an interview shortly after landing. Because their genetics are practically identical, the brothers are offering scientists an unprecedented opportunity to understand the many different effects that space travel can have on the human body.

Meanwhile, Scott Kelly will have to re-acclimate before the months of medical testing begin. Kelly is holding a zinnia plant grown in space as part of the Veggie experiment on the International Space Station.

But the United States and Russian Federation both have their eyes deeper into space, and in order to get there, it was important to see how Kelly and Kornienko would handle a year orbiting Earth.

“Congratulations on your record”, former cosmonaut and Kazak space agency chief Talgat Musabayev said at a welcoming ceremony.

Before departing Dzhezkazgan, Kelly said he was glad to be back on Earth, but he had “mixed emotions” about leaving the International Space Station. Researches can now study the differences between the genetic doubles when one has been in space for a long period of time and the other has remained on earth.